Galtung, Violence, and Gender: The Case for a Peace Studies/Feminism Alliance

Abstract

My paper argues for an incorporation of feminist theories into peace theories, by analyzing what is missing by not confronting feminist contributions to a theory on violence. I take Johan Galtung's theory of violence as a point of departure, as a theory that is widely uncontested in peace studies. Galtung's articulation of direct, structural, and cultural violence offers a unified framework within which all violence can be seen. On the other hand, feminism can contribute to and enrich Galtung's theory of violence in four possible ways: Galtung's theory needs to incorporate notions of gender as a social construct embodying relations of power. Dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories that shape our understanding of the world are gendered and they are key to the production and reproduction of violence at all levels. Gendered language defines the possibility and impossibility of pursuing different visions of the social world. Violence and peace can be constituted through language. Violence produces and defines gender identities and, in turn, is produced and defined by them. These contributions have important implications for peace studies: only by taking gender seriously as a category of analysis, can prescriptions for a violence‐free society be more than temporary solutions to deeply ingrained attitudes to accept violence as “natural.”

To live and let die: Food, famine, and administrative violence in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979

“…This move is strengthened by the recent work of feminists and social anthropologists who have further challenged the apparent dichotomy between these forms of violence (Anglin, 1998;Confortini, 2006;Hume, 2008;Tyner, 2012a). For these scholars, what superficially appears as a binary between two different and oppositional 'forms' of violence is in actuality a dialectics of violence.…”

Doing Feminist Peace

“…As decolonization extended to Africa and a number of armed conflicts fueled by the Cold War broke out, the former were starting to think about violence as both personal and structural (see Confortini 2006). The latter, however, remained adamant in their condemnation of direct violence and in their minimization of the import and consequences of other forms of violence.…”

Geographies of Peace and Antiviolence

“…He first introduced the concept in 1969, and elaborated on it in 1990 by theorizing cultural violence. “Whereas personal violence is violence with a subject, structural violence is violence without a subject, and cultural violence serves as legitimization of both personal and structural violence” (Confortini 2006, 336). Galtung argues that consciousness‐raising work is particularly crucial because structural violence is maintained by the dominance of elite understandings, which fragment and marginalize groups from one another and which prevent grassroots development of alternative understandings.…”